AILA Conference in San Diego, June 15-18. Will You Be There?

Image by Jose P Isern Comas via Flickr

A generous organization decided to pay my way to the annual American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) conference in San Diego this year and give Netroots a skip since there’s not much to be gained from attending the latter besides forming your own panels outside of predefined spaces. I feel like I’m moving both up and forward in life and that illusion offers a good feeling.

As a member of AILA and aspiring member of the legal profession, I’m totally thrilled about the opportunity to meet and spend the weekend with some of the best minds in the field. The agenda looks fantastic and I would be dumb to pass up an opportunity to see Assistant Director of ICE, John Morton, give a keynote in front of 3000 immigration professionals who are generally not very happy with the administration. The bigger question is whether Morton as an AILA keynote speaker represents an endorsement of Obama’s reign of terror against immigrant families. But I’m more interested in meeting new people and learning things that make me a better advocate for our communities.

Sometimes you alter or eliminate the rules of the game in order to win and other times you beat the system with its own rules and I’m not going to complain about either tactic as long as it adds up to winning.

As usual, I can’t decide on whether to attend the Asian or LGBT interest dinner that is scheduled at the same time but I think good food and good company is a bigger priority than figuring out what pre-defined category I should put myself into for a particular evening.

Holler me if you are going and want to meet up!